U.S. Pat. No. 8,388,600, incorporated herein by reference, describes a device and method of positioning a catheter tip within a patient's nasal cavity in order to deliver an anesthetic to create a nerve block. As explained in U.S. Pat. No. 8,388,600, FIG. 1 depicts a cutaway view of the anatomical features of a typical human nasal cavity. One skilled in the art will recognize that certain anatomical features and structures of the human nasal cavity have been omitted to avoid obscuring the structures relevant to the practice of the current invention. To help orient the reader, the mouth 106 is illustrated with teeth 108 and tongue 110. The anatomical structures relevant to the practice of the current invention include the palate 100 which separates the oral cavity 102 from the nasal cavity 104, the inferior sinus turbinate 112, the middle sinus turbinate 114 and the superior sinus turbinate 116 as well as the nasal bone 122. The middle sinus turbinate 114 and superior sinus turbinate 116 define the sphenopalatine/pterygopalatine recess 118. Deep within the sphenopalatine/pterygopalatine recess 118 at the posterior 124 of the sphenopalatine/pterygopalatine recess 118 lies the sphenopalatine/pterygopalatine ganglia 120.
One skilled in the art will recognize that the medical community is not uniform in the terminology with regard to the sphenopalatine or pterygopalatine ganglia. Certain practitioners use sphenopalatine while others use pterygopalatine. Therefore, the present description will refer to the ganglia labeled 120 as the sphenopalatine/pterygopalatine ganglia 120. Similarly, the recess labeled 118 will be referred to as the sphenopalatine/pterygopalatine recess 118. However, this terminology is in no way limiting on the structure for which the present invention is intended. Where practitioners or scientist differentiate between the sphenopalatine ganglia or the pterygopalatine ganglia, the present disclosure will be understood to apply to either structure.
As is evident from FIG. 1, the structure of the nasal cavity makes it difficult to deliver a catheter tip to the sphenopalatine/pterygopalatine recess 118. While U.S. Pat. No. 8,388,600 describes a device and method of positioning a catheter tip, such may not be sufficiently accurate and/or may be complicated in use.